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Noalen of Clan Lavellan
Noalen of the 'Lavellan' clan is a Dalish elf who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and subsequently became the 'Herald of Andraste' and later on the 'Inquisitor'. Overview Physical Appearance His lithe build combined with his rather tall stature - especially for an elf - make the term 'lanky' most suitable for him. His most discernible feature are his full lips in all likelihood, lips which he himself considers too large and out of proportion for his face. Aside from that his eyes usually stand out to others; his pupils surrounded by a ring of bright golden brown, framed by greenish grey irises, which can look more green, more grey and sometimes even bright turquoise depending on the light shed on them. Noalen would not describe himself as particularly special looking. His face is rather narrow and long with a matching nose and high, relatively sharp cheekbones. His face is adorned with the vallaslin of Ghilan'nain, the elven goddess of the halla, the ink a faded green. His curly hair is a dark shade of golden blonde, long and usually worn in a dishevelled braid or ponytail. Although, speaking of special, most people do notice the deep dimples he gets in his cheeks whenever he smiles, something he had been completely unaware of himself and it effectively earned him the nickname 'Dimples' with Varric. Personality If his friends and acquaintances were asked to describe Noalen in one word, 'kind' would likely be the term mentioned most often, closely followed by 'gentle' going over 'naive' to 'distant' to 'downright stupid' ('I do realise that's two words, my dear, but I'm in desperate need of the additional adjective to emphasise just how ignorant our dear Lord Inquisitor truly is.') Growing up among the Dalish, Noalen may have learned many a thing about how to navigate the wilds, how to determine which plants are edible and which aren't and what herbs possess healing properties for small ailments encountered in the field. It did, however, teach him very little about the outside world, leaving him woefully ignorant about most issues plaguing Thedas. His closest advisors frequently regard him as 'naive' and 'sheltered'. Noalen is also very much a daydreamer, having spent the majority of his youth away from the clan, exploring the wilds and retreating into the realms of his imagination. He often gives off the impression of being a million miles away and sometimes has difficulty pulling himself back to reality. Having faced many a rejection in his youth - from his clan, his first love and even his own mother - Noalen has developed a keen fear of rejection and abandonment and as a result he resorted to building a thick emotional wall around himself, which - to people who don't know him well - can make him come across as distant, quiet and at times downright cold. The people who do actually take the time to get to know him and prove themselves trustworthy to him, are however quick to find a very warm, compassionate core inside this shell. When Noalen truly comes to care for someone, he 'mates' for life so to speak and is loyal to a fault. He usually tries to see the good in people, exerting mercy wherever possible and his gentle nature becomes apparent quickly to most people who meet him. Unfortunately, Noalen is also a very fearful person, fear controlling much of his life and preventing him from rising to his true potential. He fears other people, he fears being rejected and - most of all - he fears himself, his magic and the Fade. These fears also tie in with his strong desire to remain in control of himself and his life. He's very afraid of uncontrollable situations and he detests unpredictability. The only offensive spell he knew at the time of the Conclave was 'Winter's Grasp'; he favours ice magic over the other two elements, ice being contained, predictable and easily focused onto a single point. Fire and electricity are too unruly, too prone to spread and get out of control. Noalen has a fierce need to feel safe and his greatest wish is to find a home for himself, a stable base, static and reliable, something he can always fall back on. Regrettably this also renders him 'static' on a personal level rather often. He is afraid to take active steps in any direction which prevents him from truly growing as a person and overcoming his fears. 'Talents and Skills' If there's one thing Noalen is actually good at, it's making people feel loved and accepted. He never judges anyone, no matter what they have done or where they come from, instead showing empathy to all who open up to him. Practically speaking, Noalen can navigate the wilds quite well. He knows his way around a forest and is rather adept at finding sources of food, healing herbs and forecasting weather changes. While not a strong mage overall, he possesses decent healing and protective skills, and his mastery of evasion is almost unmatched within the mage ranks of the Inquisition - the spell 'Fade Step' having been the first spell he has ever performed in his life. Furthermore his fear of the Fade has made him reluctant to draw magical energy from it, instead favouring drawing his powers from nature and other magic all around him which has made him rather skilled at Transmutation. Biography History Born on the fourteenth of Wintermarch, 9:17 Dragon to Athrenna, a young, recently widowed huntress, his mother named him after his paternal grandfather, as Ezrin, Noalen's father, had wanted. Noalen quickly proved to be a burdensome infant, crying frequently and waking from his sleep. His mother, overwhelmed and unwilling to raise a child on her own, often left the infant by itself to go hunting with the other elves. Deshanna, herself quite young at the time and still a First in training to the Keeper then, took pity on the child and took him under her wing, effectively raising Noalen as her own. Though he proved to be a difficult child. As soon as he learned to talk he started questioning the stories told by the Keeper and was quite reluctant to accept facts as facts. He grew up to be a curious and stubborn child, frequently wandering off on his own, often watching nearby human settlements from a distance. He became intrigued by humans and sceptical about the things his clan had taught him about them. With his naive look on things, he saw nothing more than a species not particularly different from his own people, mostly just trying to make a living through hard work. They faced the same weather, the same illnesses and emotional hardships as the Dalish, after all. His persistent absences from and lack of active participation in the clan led to him becoming somewhat of an outcast. The other clan members did not know what to make of him and found his curiosity about humans peculiar. Clan Lavellan had never held decidedly anti-human views; even after some of their hunters had been killed by Orlesian Chevaliers in the Dales, which made the clan decide to venture north and roam the Free Marches, they continued to treat the humans they traded with fairly - albeit warily. Some had stronger opinions on this than others, but all of them agreed that it was best to keep humans at a safe distance. Noalen's fascination for them was not met with approval and made most of the clan regard him as even more of an oddity. Despite all this, the clan cared for him like they did for the other three children of his age and they tried to interest him more in elven traditions, religion and actively attempted to include him in the clan's daily life. Deshanna, having only just reached the age of thirty when Keeper Marethan passed away and she became Keeper herself, was quite preoccupied with her new duties and left Noalen - who was only six years old at the time - alone for the most part. She was convinced that he would find his own way in the clan and - being rather open minded herself - was not particularly worried about his unusually strong interest in humans so she frequently tolerated his behaviour and defended him from the criticisms many other clan members conveyed about him. Despite his 'rebellious' nature - Noalen proved to be the kind of child who could go on asking 'Why?' endlessly - he did come to enjoy life in the clan; his fondest memories being of the evenings when they all sat together around the campfire, sharing stories and discussing the day. He also became quite close to Nathari, the clan's Halla Keeper. He loved the halla; their strong-willed nature and refusal to let themselves be kept and caged like pets and having the will of others imposed on them a source of fascination to Noalen. He often wandered the wilds with them, following them wherever they led him and helped raise a newborn when he was seven years old. Two years later, when he was only nine, he became one of the youngest Halla riders the clan had raised in three generations, which gained him at least a little respect within the clan. The first display of his magical talent occurred when he was ten years old. While he was playing catch with two of the other children his age, he unwittingly performed a spell very akin to 'Fade Step', dissolving into a cloud of an icy, gas like substance, rematerialising several feet away. Deshanna took this revelation in stride, though she was disappointed. She had hoped to keep Noalen, whose standing with the clan was not particularly high and whom she considered too 'soft', away from authorative duties, instead wanting him to become Nathari's apprentice and eventual successor. Besides, she - like most of the clan - still held high hopes for Nawen, the granddaughter of the late Marethan, to show signs of magical talent. Though magic ran strong in their bloodline, Nawen, at fifteen years old, had yet to display any manifestation of the gift. Deshanna decided that the best she could do was to teach Noalen to at least control his magic, especially since it had a tendency to burst forth from him with increasing force - like the time he inadvertently cast a massive wave of force similar to Mind Blast from himself, effectively hurling a young hunter apprentice who had been bullying him several feet through the air. The Keeper quickly came to realise that Noalen showed promise for healing magic, rejoicing in using his gift to do good and she mainly focused his training on restorative magic. The young elf enjoyed performing magic a lot and was keen to learn as much as he could in as short a time as possible - with varying success. The next few years of Noalen's life passed rather uneventfully. He more or less found a place for himself in the clan and even though he had not yet officially been appointed First to the Keeper, most of the clan had already come to regard him as such - with varying degrees of reluctance. His interest in humans never faltered however, if anything it only became stronger, but most clan members had resigned themselves to tolerate it as an eccentricity of his as long as nothing more came of it. When Noalen was just shy of sixteen however and the clan was camped just outside of Ostwick, he made the acquaintance of Brann, a human stable boy, the first time Noalen came into contact with a human directly. Though apprehensive at first, the two of them quickly developed a strong friendship and eventually Noalen fell in love with the young man. Deshanna knew about this, having been informed of the two young men's association by a group of elven scouts who had witnessed the two spending time together. For a time the Keeper defended Noalen from the clan's resentment, assuring them that it was nothing more than an innocent, young friendship and that the human would in all likelihood come to mistreat Noalen sooner or later, like all humans eventually did and that this would teach the young elf a lesson better than simply forbidding him to associate with the young man could. But, as the opposing voices grew more adamant over the next year, the Keeper ultimately decided to have the clan pack up and leave. The last time Noalen met Brann to bid him farewell, the young elf found the courage to confess his feelings to him but was met with rejection. This experience scarred Noalen deeply and over the course of the next few months he grew quiet and distant. He still attended his magical lessons with the Keeper, albeit with much less enthusiasm than before. Deshanna eventually appointed Noalen her First as Nawen, 22 years old by now and pregnant with her second child, had still not shown any signs of magic. Following Noalen's first experience of love, his nightly dreams started to become increasingly realistic, even more so than they already had been. It came to a point where he developed a difficulty to tell dreams and reality apart and when he confided in his Keeper about this, she suspected him of being a Somniari. Deshanna knew hardly anything about the entire concept but she knew enough that dreamers could easily become a great danger to themselves and anyone around them if they were too frail of mind to withstand the Fade and all its trappings. She feared for Noalen and ordered him to ingest dream suppressing herbs every night. She did not inform him or anyone else in the clan of her suspicions, instead telling Noalen that he was too fragile to effectively oppose the demons he could possibly encounter in his dreams. This had a profound effect on Noalen's psyche. He became afraid of the Fade and his own magic and his powers suffered greatly from it. Instead of drawing energy from the Fade, he resigned himself to draw magic from nature and already existing magic around him. While he taught himself to become an adequate Transmutation mage this way, his magic would never be as strong as that of a mage who could confidently manipulate the Fade and draw energy from it. During the next few years Noalen took part in clan life, though always in a state of emotional seclusion. He still wandered off on his own frequently, though mostly in secret now and watched human settlements from a distance - but his former curiosity and fascination had been replaced by a strong sensation of melancholy. When he was seventeen years old, the Keeper decided that it was time for him to become an adult member of the clan and granted him permission to acquire his vallaslin. It came as no surprise to anyone that he pledged himself to Ghilan'nain, the elven goddess of the Halla, though Noalen would become known for his inability to keep quiet during the process of application. It ultimately took him six attempts to receive his fully finished vallaslin, a record in the recorded history of the clan and he sported a vallaslin in different stages of completion for years. At the end of the year 9:40 Dragon Deshanna chose Noalen to attend the Conclave which was to take place on 12 Wintermarch 9:41 Dragon. She made this decision based mostly on Noalen's interest in humans and the unwillingness of any other clan member to venture south. The Keeper was curious about the outcome of the meeting; the mage rebellion could bring danger even upon the Dalish, after all, as every mage was now considered an apostate and actively hunted. 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